Competed my Interior overhaul! New Seats, carpet and trim. Pictures inside.

[Mattchu60]

For years I have wanted to put bucket seats into my truck. A few weeks ago I started into my project and went all out - new ACC carpet, a couple door panels I got from a donor truck which I repainted black with Duplicolor Vinyl paint and added new trim and arm rests to. I also repainted the kick panels & headliner trim using the same paint.

The biggest change - the seats. I looked a many pictures of trucks (thanks to this site!) with aftermarket seats to get an idea of what I liked. I settled on a seat of lowback seats from Shop4Seats. After talking with the folks on the phone, i went with black vinyl material for the seats.

It took about 2 months for the seats to be built in CA. The seats appear to be very high quality built seats, with thick cushioning and heavy built as well.

After removing the old interior, I had to deal with some surface rust on the driver floor panel - I used POR15 to seal it. After a week of letting it dry I covered the enter floor and back wall behind the storage shelf with Dynamat Extreme.

I installed the ACC carpet, which i ordered with the mass loaded backing on it for helping quiet things down.



The middle seatback can be folded up to use for sitting on, or folded down where it has a small storage compartment and cupholders on it - the cupholder design is probably the worst part about these, they are not deep plus they are oversized and I can easily see a can of pop tipping over in them.

2nd picture of the seat folded up.


It took a good part of the day for the install, which was suprising as you would think it would just bolt into place - nope - while they supply brackets for the seats, there were "adjustments" needed, I drilled new holes for the main bracket so the whole assembly was shifted forward 2". If I hadn't done this, the middle seat would never fold up, and the two buckets would be maxed out to the front and hitting the back wall. With moving it forward it allows me to have a little fore/aft adjustment and tilt the buckets some more.



I have driving about 10 miles in them so far, I noticed the ride is much improved over the stock bouncy seat, its a firmer feeling which is also comfortable. Also I sit higher in the cab now - maybe 2-3" higher, but its not an issue. The biggest downside is like mentioned before - you do lose some legroom due to the think padding used in the seatbacks - probably 3-4" of legroom. Again its not an issue for me - I am 5'10" and still am comfortable - for a person over 6' I think it would be more of a problem.

Lastly, picture of my truck. Its been used for the last month on the farm pulling the seed wagon around for planting, so its dirty from running in fields.



My goals were to make the truck more modern, with a classic look. Also I continue to add things like sound deadening materials to the cab. It seems to have helped quite a bit - the few miles I drove I can hear the difference - also I don't have the radio as loud and hear it more clearly on the highway.

I have new black seatbelts coming in the mail - ordered from a place called Julianos Hot Rod Parts - they appear to be nice looking units, but I have not rec'd them yet - so for now I still have the old red belts.

In a month or so I tackle the big project - swapping the entire truck body and drivetrain onto the frame I blasted, painted and swapped 64" rear chevy springs onto, along with things like new gas tanks and body mounts. I feel like that is going to be a month long project as I'll be painting things as I swap them over. Excited for it - but also sad I'll loose a month of driving this around.